The availability of shared storage systems for electronic documents has increased the ability of computer end users to share and collaborate in the creation of a variety of electronic documents. End users can cause documents to be stored in shared storage systems on a computer network, such as the internet. End users can instruct such a shared storage system to allow electronic documents to be shared with other end users of the shared storage system. A shared storage system generally has an access control component in a file system that tracks the access rights users have for each electronic document.
After an electronic document has been shared among two or more end users, the shared storage system manages access to the shared electronic document to ensure consistency of the electronic document, especially in the case of collaborative editing of, i.e., collaborative modifications to, the electronic document. A collaboration system manages collaborative modification by tracking which end users currently are using end user applications on client computers to access the same electronic document. The collaboration system typically is implemented as one or more computer programs executing the server computer, and, in some implementations, may have components executing on the client computers.
An end user application running on a computer, for the purpose of modifying electronic documents, typically is configured to save the electronic document automatically while it is being edited. When the electronic document is shared, such automatic saving during collaborative modification has increased complexity.